Like A Shadow
by QuoteMyFoot
Summary: Death follows shinobi like a shadow, haunting some more than others, but haunting all the same. And they all have their ways of coping. Oneshot. 12fic.


Hinata's first kill is perfect.

Her opponent is a shinobi taller and stronger and more experienced than she is, but apparently one who is ignorant of the Hyuuga's fighting style, because she manages to keep up with him easily after paralyzing his left arm. He manages to avoid the rest of her blows, but she can tell that it's getting harder and harder for him so it is only a matter of time.

Then Akamaru whines and there's a strangled cry from one of the boys. Hinata doesn't even know which one of the boys it is, and doesn't need to; she just knows that she doesn't have time to waste because her teammates need her _now_.

So she dodges a swift punch and draws one arm back as she incapacitates his right arm with her other, charges her hand with chakra, and executes a Jyuuken finishing strike that her _father _would be envious of.

The man drops, his heart pulverised. Hinata is already turning away and rushing to her team's aid. She does not give the man a second thought until much later, when everyone is safe and Kurenai-sensei asks her if she's alright.

Hinata has no doubts. The man was trying to kill her, her teammates needed her, she did not hurt him unnecessarily or take pleasure in the kill. It troubles her, but she knows she did the right thing.

_She goes on to take many more lives in her career as a kunoichi, but never unnecessarily and never drawn out longer than she has to. She always kills in defence, either of herself or her team or Konoha. Hinata is content with this, although she regrets that they had to die, and does not have nightmares. She is one of the lucky ones._

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Choji's first kill is a turning point.

Like his father before him, Choji had always been a little too kind-hearted to be a good shinobi. This is, in fact, an Akimichi family trait. Only three of them have ever entered ANBU, and apart from those three, no Akimichi has _ever _been sent on an assassination mission. Choji only attended the academy because his father did, and stayed there because Shikamaru was there, and didn't really know what to do with himself when he became one of Team 10.

But he has only to think of that moment, when he made a choice between being a ninja and a coward, and took the red pill. He remembers an instant of clarity, between the absolute certainty of death, and victory, and the knowledge that his friends were still ahead of him, and he remembers thinking _this is what a ninja is. _

It makes perfect sense to him, and still does, even years afterwards. He remembers being furious. He remembers _how dare he call Shikamaru a coward_ and _how dare he help take Sasuke away from Konoha _and _how dare he try to make me fail my __**friends. **_

And he remembers that he thought he would rather die than do that.

_Every life Choji takes in the future he hates. It makes his heart ache, no matter who they are or what they've done. But he hardens his heart and he does it anyway. He does it for his friends. He does it for his family, his own children, eventually. He does it for the same reason all Akimichi do: the idea that one day there can be something greater than this; something greater than death and revenge and war. He does it for Konoha. Choji never likes killing, no, but he always believes in that instant of clarity, and that it can be worth it._

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Tenten's first kill is nothing special.

It isn't really, not by any stretch of the imagination. The mission, one of her early ones when she, Lee and Neji were still struggling to become a team and not yet used to Gai-sensei's eccentricities, is mind-numbingly simple, barely a C-rank. Escort this guy here, he's paranoid about bandits, the chances of you actually meeting said bandits are astronomically small. A week in the company of four guys that you don't get on with. Have fun!

The only surprise comes when they do, in fact, encounter the bandits - but that, too, is part and parcel of shinobi life, and no great surprise. Expect the unexpected and all that.

In any case, these bandits are woefully pathetic. This was the days before Tenten had developed any of her special techniques with her weapons, and relied only on her accuracy and strength. Her academy mates were quick enough to avoid all but the best of her throws. She'd forgotten, though, that no matter how many of them failed, they were all _trained to be ninja. _

Which is more than she can say for these morons, she thinks, somewhat stunned, when the kunai she threw to get her opponent into the position to be hit by another turns out to be too fast for him to dodge, and gets him straight in the eye and kills him. She is, in fact, getting ready to throw the other one at the space where he _should_ be, and looks down and frowns at the weapon in her hand, for just a moment, feeling dissatisfied in a way she cannot place or explain.

None of her teammates have even noticed her first kill, and will not until she mentions it, later.

_Surrounded by geniuses, Tenten will always think herself mediocre. She should stand out, being one of the few women in Konoha geared towards physical strength and the use of weapons, but in reality she will simply be looked over and passed over, again and again. This, she knows, is what a ninja should really want: fame breeds envy breeds enemies. Tenten won't be able to help feeling underappreciated, though, and gradually her weapon skills will develop - scrolls and sealing and unusual traps, all of her own creation, will begin to pepper her repertoire. If you must kill someone, Tenten thinks, and you know you can, there is no harm doing it in __**style. **_

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Neji's first kill is an accident.

Team Gai specialises in combat. They are designed to cause damage, and they are good at it. But at the time they are just genin, and it's the first mission where they've had to face this many enemies. They are coping admirably, of course, but facing those sorts of numbers is a little unnerving if nothing else.

The ground makes it difficult to get a solid footing, but that hurts their opponents more than it hurts them.

Still, nobody blames Neji when his foot shifts unexpectedly under the loose rock, and in the act of regaining his balance, the Jyuuken strike he had been aiming at the enemy's shoulder hits his throat instead. The man falls with a strangled gurgle, and Neji realises distractedly that he has probably partially crushed the man's windpipe with a strike like that, if not something worse.

But he doesn't have time to think about it, because now more of them are upon him, and he's the rookie of the year but it's _still _difficult for him to fight off four men at once, even if they are non-shinobi.

He has his Byakugan active the whole time, of course, so Neji gets to see the man slowly suffer beside him as he twists and turns under eight more arms. Neji does not get the chance to finish him off until everything is over. When he has done it, he looks down at the corpse pityingly, feeling slightly sick. The man was Fated to die, true, but... couldn't Neji have spared him the long, agonising wait?

_After that, if Neji has to kill, he kills. He does not mess about, he does not falter and he does not pause. And he most certainly does not let any soul linger, even if he has three more to kill and that split-second gap could be used to take out another. Neji does not like unfinished business._

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Shikamaru's first kill is more trouble than it should be.

Like many genin teams, Team 10's first C-rank mission has them encounter nothing more troublesome than a few bandits. Shikamaru saw them about 2 hours before they actually attacked, worked out their strategy three seconds after the attack started, and his estimation of their abilities only dropped from there.

Asuma, he knows, could easily handle all of these bandits by himself within - literally - seconds, but Shikamaru also knows that the point of these missions is to gain them experience and, no matter how troublesome it is, he is expected to actually participate and not nap in the back of their client's wagon. He sighs, and prepares to knock one of them out or something. How trouble-

It takes Shikamaru about six seconds to realise how _horribly unprepared _he is. The guy who is trying to kill him is doing so inexpertly, with so many mistakes and openings that it actually makes him wince - all the same he knows he's going to wake up in a lot of pain in the morning; he can _see _the openings but he can't _exploit _them, and he's not fast enough to create an opportunity for his intellect to use.

In the end, after a few minutes of terribly undignified scuffling, Shikamaru breaks the man's neck when he forces them both down a steep hill. It's half an accident, and he knows it. The knowledge settles in the pit of his stomach and doesn't leave for a long, long time.

_It's in that moment that Shikamaru finally __**knows **__that he cannot win on brains alone. Later he will look back on his younger self, and feel ashamed (and a little angry) that he was allowed to be so complacent and so arrogant until that moment. He will know that he can't just be a strategist, he can't even be simply average, because a ninja is trained to take advantage of opportunities, and the only thing that separates bad from good is the number of opportunities they can see. A successful ninja, though, needs the skills to succeed - and that is the reason bad ninja can be feared, and good ninja can be failures. And he will know, always, that he was almost the latter._

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Naruto's first kill is caused by anger.

With the Kyuubi chakra still swirling in his veins, eager but discontented from the aborted kill of Haku, Naruto takes on Gato's thugs. It is not visible, but it does not need to be for it to still influence him. He kills several times, feels an alien satisfaction when their blood hits his jumpsuit, but does not dwell on it. The Kyuubi is sated for the time being.

Because he does not notice, he does not learn his lesson. For all the power of the Kyuubi comes a price. Not even when he almost kills his teacher does Naruto learn not to kill in anger, because anger lets in someone else, and it is letting in someone else, something else, to your killing that makes it easier and easier to do.

_But in the end it is once more Sasuke who is Naruto's indirect saviour. He is in denial, but deep down Naruto knows that the time may come when there __**is **__no third option, no chance for him to take another path, and he may have to kill Sasuke for the greater good - maybe even for the good of his friend. And when, __**if**__, that day comes, Naruto does not want the last memory he has of his best friend to be anger and blood._

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Shino's first kill is quiet.

It is his team's fourth C-rank mission. He doesn't even think about it at the time. He tells a portion of his kikkai to drain that man of chakra, and moves on because his team needs help and he can't focus on one enemy who probably isn't going to get back up again anyway. But he tells them to drain his chakra, just in case. He neglects to give orders about when they should discontinue.

It is only when the fight is over that Shino turns round and just stops.

'That man' is dead.

He's killed him.

It was quiet and the man was already unconscious. Shino did not have to touch the man himself; didn't even see the moment when he stopped breathing. He knows he should feel something, but he is so detached from the whole thing. It doesn't feel like he has done anything, even though he plainly has. He feels like he has just been informed of the death of a stranger.

He feels vague discontent. Nothing more.

_Afterwards Shino picks up the habit of killing all his enemies personally, standing over them as the kikkai drain the last of their chakra or - even better - stabbing them quickly with a kunai. Only a monster feels nothing from killing, and Shino is determined to make himself __**feel**__,__ each and every time he takes a life._

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Sakura's first kill is wrong.

She can only feel, deep in her soul, that she has done the wrong thing by taking a life, and no amount of rationalisation and justification can change the fact that she feels unclean.

Coming from a civilian family, rather than a ninja clan, has influenced Sakura's way of thinking. She really went to the Academy for Sasuke and Ino, and that just made it harder for them to make her a shinobi. For all her high scores at the Academy, they still did not succeed.

Civilian families _do not _bring their children up constantly drilling the idea into their head that it is okay for them to kill in the right circumstances; for their village. Civilians _do not have _those circumstances, because that is what ninja are for. Civilians _do not _approve of their daughter's choice of becoming, essentially, a trained murderer. Civilians _do not think _that to a clan of ninja, ninja are not murderers, they are_ heroes _and they are _necessary. _

Sakura has been told this, and knows it on an intellectual level. But she does not believe it in her heart.

Her parents always told her: killing is wrong. Self-defence is acceptable. Assassination is not. That they live in a ninja village and profit from the killing done by others escapes them because they do not want to think about it. It does not escape Sakura, because she has a detailed knowledge of the workings of Konoha. Civilian families rarely enter the Academy for a reason: afterwards, they cannot be safe in the knowledge that they are not _ninja, _because they know now they are just as bad, and they cannot be ninja either because they do not want to murder. Many civilians trained as ninja do one of four things: fail abysmally, go insane, commit suicide, or quietly but urgently find an administrative or just _non-violent_ post. Something, anything.

_In the end, the identity and surroundings of Sakura's first kill did not, and __**could**__** not**__, matter. Her reaction had been programmed into her from the very beginning, and it was the deciding factor in her decision to train under Tsunade, and the reason that she cannot bring herself to become as strong as her mind tells her she has the potential to be. As a medic, she can even the balance between death and life. As a combat specialist, she cannot._

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Sasuke's first kill is not what he wants.

No matter what the face in front of him is like, he can only think of his brother. Itachi. He has to die. Itachi. Sasuke must kill Itachi.

So when he observes the blood of a rogue Kumo kunoichi on his hands and Orochimaru chuckles his approval, Sasuke frowns and does not feel anything.

It is not Itachi. It does not matter.

And if he feels the need to wash that blood off immediately, that is only because it is hygienic to do so. And if he does not wear those clothes again, although there is no blood on them that he can see, then that it only because they are no longer practical. And if Sasuke wakes up sweating and has to look at his pale hands, that is only because the dream seemed very real and for a moment he thinks he has fought that kunoichi again. And if that thought disturbs him, because Orochimaru could make it happen...

Then that is a lie.

_He does not kill again on Orochimaru's orders. Sasuke does not care about any other lives. They are irrelevant. Only Itachi's matters. They have done him no disservice, no harm, no injury - as if they could touch him! - so he sees no point in taking their lives. Orochimaru is not his master. He cannot force him to do anything. He __**will not**__ force him to do anything._

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Kiba's first kill is savage.

He is using that jutsu, the one that's the baseline for all his techniques (or most of them). It blurs the line, a little, between him and Akamaru (_not _man and beast, they are more than that) and as much as Akamaru becomes like him, he becomes like Akamaru. Something fiercer, more animal. Less man, more beast.

So when he sees an enemy approaching Shino from behind, he doesn't think anything of leaping over and ripping his throat out.

Until the blood pours into his mouth, and he can _taste _it, coppery and slick, on his tongue - and he's so horrified that he just freezes, in the middle of the battle, and can't even bring himself to spit it out.

He stays like that - it must only be a few seconds - until the fight's over, and then Shino has one hand on his shoulder and is forcing a canteen at him with the other and is telling him to _here, wash it out, _and then Kiba just sits down and cries. He doesn't even know why, except that he really needs to and the fact that his team is right there doesn't matter.

Shino talks to him and does not stop. He's doesn't like to speak unnecessarily, but he's making the effort for his sake, and Kiba has never been more grateful to another person in his life.

_In the future, Kiba will avoid going for the throat unless he has no other choice. Although his double-headed wolf form with Akamaru is powerful, he uses it only as a last resort, and only when other lives are at risk, never his own. And when Naruto talks about the Kyuubi, about how it's not just him it's __**them**__, Kiba understands, and does what Shino did for him: he talks. Naruto is the only person outside of Team 8 and Kiba's family to ever know how he made his first kill. _

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Ino's first kill is somewhat bizarre.

The Yamanaka normally find their skills in incapacitating the enemy, so Ino is a chuunin by the time she takes a mission where she has to end a life, and with strangers, no less. The mission doesn't go well, and her team ends up in a fight with some Iwa shinobi. Ino jumps from body to body, but since the enemy are Iwa-nin they know exactly what she is capable of and they know exactly what to aim for.

The next thing she knows, one of the Iwa-nin is about to kill a teammate and then her, so Ino throws herself into her teammate's body, then into the enemy shinobi. From there she makes the enemy run at one of _his _teammates, one wielding a katana. Then she throws herself into _his _body and makes sure he stabs his own teammate through the heart. _Then _she throws herself back into _her_ teammate's body and kills Katana Boy with a kunai whilst he's still blinking in shock. Then she returns to her own body and tries to stop her head spinning.

Ino sees her first kill from four different perspectives. Her own says _one down, we can do this, we aren't going to die;_ Enemy One's says _no, not Renka, he's too young, you bitch, you monster_; Katana Boy's says _what have I done? Oh god what have I done, I'm sorry I'm sorry;_ her teammate's says _holy shit, she can do something like that? Fuck that's actually kind of sick, shit..._

When the fight is over she collapses and dreams of people inside her head, cutting her open, and she can't get them out.

_From that point on Ino always tries to make a kill from her own body, with her own hands and blades. The boys are usually there to protect her, kill for her, and sometimes she almost yells at them for thinking she can't take care of herself - but she remembers, until the day she dies, the feeling of being many people at once, and dying and killing and pleading and __**monster**__ at the same time. So Ino lets the boys do what they like, and sometimes she will just throw her arms around them and not let go for a very long time. _

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And Lee's first kill is, indirectly, world-changing.

He does not kill until after he has become enamoured of Gai's life philosophy: it is UNYOUTHFUL to kill without it being necessary, and to do so will QUENCH THE BURNING FLAMES OF HIS YOUTH. To kill in the defence of a precious person (as long as there is no other choice) is, naturally, the VERY EPITOME OF YOUTHFULNESS AND SHINOBI HONOUR.

This last part of Gai-sensei's SPEECH IN THE WAYS OF THE SPRINGTIME OF YOUTH, Lee will think after he goes over his notes, is not something that his teacher espouses often. In fact, he's not sure he has heard the phrase 'shinobi honour' before. He asks his teacher about this after he has killed for the first time (in a manner perfectly fitting with THE YOUTHFUL WAYS, breaking a man's neck to save Tenten from an UNYOUTHFUL AND COWARDLY ambush), and he sees something he has not yet seen before: Maito Gai, looking both serious and ashamed. He tells his student a story.

"When I became a shinobi Konoha was at war, and even genin were expected to do their bit. D-ranks did not exist. My team was given an assassination mission. Whilst our jonin-sensei distracted his shinobi guards, we were to kill a weapons merchant who dealt solely with Iwa. I was the strongest, so whilst my teammates were to stop me being interrupted, I was to head for the man's room.

"On the way I had to pass through an antechamber. There was a woman there who had just finished cleaning; she was preparing to leave. I would have only had to conceal myself for perhaps thirty seconds before she left the room and I could continue. Intellectually, I knew I could afford this delay. But I felt rushed and nervous and I did not wish to wait. So I broke her neck and then entered he target's room and smothered him whilst he was sleeping."

It is the first time Lee has heard Gai-sensei talk about death so coldly, in such a detached and calculated way. He gasps in horror when he hears Gai-sensei admit to killing a woman he did not need to.

"Our mission was successful and I was praised for my conduct and professionalism, but three years later I passed through that area on another mission. I did not want to be seen, so I went around that city and ended up passing through a small cemetery on the outskirts of it. I saw three children there with a man, placing a photograph and flowers in one spot. The youngest couldn't have been more than three or four herself."

Lee is not the brightest shinobi going, but he knows what comes next. "The photograph was the woman you killed?"

Gai nods, and Lee can see tears in his eyes. "I took someone away from her children and husband to be 30 seconds faster. A life is worth more than that. That is what I mean by shinobi honour, Lee. Chakra gives us power far beyond the capabilities of most, and it is easy to take this for granted. But when that happens, you forget about ordinary people and the ordinary life you are ending. To me, she was just an obstacle. But she was loved just the same as I was. Honour for ninja is often a meaningless word, because we must sometimes do terrible things in the name of our village: betray, lie, torture, steal, murder, mutilate, cripple, brainwash. Honour for a ninja is only doing those terrible things when we _must_, and not when it suits us better that way."

_And from that day on Lee knows that Gai is not teaching him so that Lee can be as good as he is; Gai is teaching Lee so he can be __**better.**__ Many years later, when Lee is a shinobi of fame that has eclipsed all taijutsu-specialists before or since, he still remembers this story. He begins a campaign that will revolutionise the shinobi world: to change the code of behaviour that all the Hidden Villages agreed on, to make it a prosecutable offence to physically or mentally harm an innocent without just cause. He succeeds and has a quiet, retroactive trial held for his teacher, long-since dead. This shocks everyone, friend, foe and acquaintance alike, but Lee can only hope desperately that when he was found posthumously guilty of murder based on his own student's testimony, somewhere, somehow, Maito Gai finally felt like he could begin to forgive himself._

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**A/N: **It's been an awfully long time since I've written anything for the Naruto fandom. How are you, folks? My muse up and left me. This has been sitting on my computer, unfinished, for about... oh, a year? I finished it recently and it mutated completely out of what I had in mind for it back when I started. (Why did I add angst to Maito Gai? Why did I do this? Do not ask, I couldn't answer.) To be honest, though, I'm just glad it's _done, _and I probably haven't proofread it nearly as much as I should've. All comments are loved, and please point out any errors you find! Perhaps you'll see a few more Naruto fics out of me after November, and NaNoWriMo, are done.

By the way: yes, the ordering is deliberate. Also, this is set in the same... continuity, I guess, as my other fic "Underneath the Underneath".


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